The Vow
by x-backtoblack-x
Summary: For most people, finding the balance between primal interest and a much deeper love can take years to find, Santana Lopez however found it when she was eight years old. A short story about Santana and Brittany falling in love.


You don't notice someone across a crowded room because of their sense of humour, their inelegance or their kind heart, you notice instead the way their eyes sparkle or the way their hair falls or the length of their legs or the curve of their body. Everyone has that primal instinct, that first spark that ignites a pursuit for them. They have two basic choices in this very first moment of attraction, to advance or retreat because much like the general sending his troops to war you are aware at all times that chances of success are at this point fifty fifty. If you fail then you fall back licking your wounds clean; if you're successful however you advance again past the point of initial attraction to something much trickier.

For you see, much like you don't find that initial spark without the alluring sight to draw you in, you will never find anything deeper than that without other characteristics vital to any person; inelegance, wit, heart and soul, all key components in that crazy little thing called love. A crazy little things that can take years to develop from that first meeting, may not develop at all or, if you are to believe the eternal optimists and dreamers, may develop at the exact same moment as that first affection... though that idea isn't for me.

For most people, finding the balance between primal interest and a much deeper love can take years to find. For others it may never come at all; they may not know what they're looking for or they might simply just be looking in the wrong places. I on the other hand? Well I found the person that would give me all that when I was eight years old.

Yes that's right, I was eight years old when I walked into my first day of that third grade class and found my name card placed neatly on a desk that was occupied by someone foreign to me. My first reaction? Well you'd think it'd be shock, or surprise even confusion because at eight years old there is no world outside school or home so where did this new person come from?

Though no, not for me. At the tender age of eight and not even interested in boys yet like some of my cousins in middle school, the first thing I noticed about this new girl was the way her golden blonde hair fell past her shoulders into a gentle heavenly curl that spun around her elbows, which were left exposed thanks to her sieves being rolled up, thus giving me a glimpse of her peachy skin, not quite porcelain, though I could tell it would have been if she didn't spend so much time in the sun. Still before I had a chance to react to this stranger her eyes met mine and I instantly became struck again, feeling my mind get lost in the deep blue pools so crystal clear I had to stop myself jumping into that never ending pool of emotion and swimming there with her laughter, her tears, her triumphs and her failures because I could see it all, under her long dark lashes I could see an entire universe of soul like I never thought imaginable.

That was it. For me that was most definitely the first spark, the draw that left my heart out of time with the rest of my body and for me in that moment there was no option of advance or retreat because I am sure to this day that the decision had been made for me the second my teacher placed our names at the one desk, I was to advance and never turn around again.

From then on it was simple yet hard. Without knowing the word for the emotion I slowly began to feel - or at least not realizing at first that it was this emotion I was feeling - I soon found myself falling for this girl, and falling hard. The way she was able to laugh at herself, the way she never let others get her down when they called her names, the way she felt compassion for all and slowly taught me to do the same, the way her lack of book smarts didn't stop her from being the wisest person I'd ever met, the way I was confidant her heart was stored somewhere else, because it was surely too big to fit inside her rib cage, the way her body moved freely whenever music played, whether it was merely walking in time to a beat or when I went to watch her dance recitals.

This trip that I went on falling in love however was the easy part for me. The hard part is when you realize that even when your initial advance is not revoked and you're permitted to advance further there's times when falling in love isn't the hard part. Even if you both feel this love and even if you both had this first spark, sometimes it devastates you to learn that to a sector of society this isn't enough to permit you to be with the one that owns your heart, the one that completes you and makes you feel all the things you never thought you could feel.

Yes, the hard part for me was realizing that to some I was wrong. To some I was silly. To some the feelings I'd felt since I was eight years old was a sin or an abomination or to those who really have no understanding of the way someone's heart works "just a phase" that I was going through.

This part still is hard for me at times, but although I had a hard time accepting that these people were wrong and that I didn't need to care about them I just needed to care about me, and what made me happy, I finally did.

I finally realized that there's a lot more to life than the looks, or the stares or what people may say about me behind my back. It took me long enough but I finally saw it, like lifting my hazy edged glasses for the first time I finally saw that thing that made all the badness in the world worth accepting myself for and that thing has been in my life since I was eight years old, and I hope will be in my life until I am eighty years old, maybe even one hundred and eighty, if I'm lucky enough.

That person, that wonderful blonde haired blue eyed person with the biggest heart and soul I've ever seen is you Brittany. It always has been and always will be.

So that along with so many other reasons is why I, Santana Maria Lopez, take you Brittany Susan Pierce to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

_And then the chapel broke into applause._

_~.~.~.~.~.~_

_I hope you liked it. Be my guest to tell me what you thought._


End file.
